The Backlog Check-in Vol. 246: 9/17/22: The DioField Chronicle/Return to Monkey Island Edition

[Phaseknox]

Played: Dying Light 2: Stay Human, The Good Life, Valkyrie Elysium demo

Finished: Valkyrie Elysium demo

Playing: Dying Light 2: Stay Human

Added: Nothing

I stopped playing The Good Life, or as I like to call it Fetch Quest: The Game. It’s a cute, quirky and zany Japanese game, but a lot of it involves delivery and fetch quests. I got a quest where I had to gather ingredients for a potion, and I needed two rabbit furs. To obtain these I had to find and kill rabbits in my cat form, but the problem was that I could barely find any rabbits and when I finally did after I don’t know how long of looking they gave me rabbit meat instead of furs when I killed them. I was spending a ridiculous amount of time running around the big barren open world trying to find rabbits to no avail. I attempted this a couple of times, and eventually gave up. I like the game enough to return to it again at some point when I’m more in the mood for it, but there’s other games that I would rather be playing now instead.

I played and finished the Valkyrie Elysium demo, and I really liked it. Enough in fact to want the game on day one, but it’s worth $40 to me not $60. If they were selling it for $40 then I would buy it on day one, but it’s just not the quality of a $60 game IMO. I really like its dark fantasy game world, the Valkyrie character that you play as and especially the combat which is a ton of fun. However, based on the demo the game is pretty much a linear action hack ‘n slash game. It’s not an adventure game or RPG, it’s strictly making your way through linear levels fighting enemies and eventually reaching a boss. It’s a lot of fun to play because the combat is so good, but it lacks depth and variety.

I started playing Dying Light 2 because I was in the mood to give it another go after six months, and I was curious to see if they improved it since then. They did quite a bit, it looks and feels like a finished game now. At launch it looked like a Switch game with low resolution, poor lighting, missing visual effects and jerky jittery moving NPCs and zombies. All of that has been fixed, and it looks like a PS4 game now. So I’m enjoying it a lot more than I did at launch, but it’s a bit challenging and demanding so I’m not sure that it’s what I’m in the mood for right now.

Games releasing this week
Amazing Chicken Adventures
Beacon Pines
Camped Out!
Construction Simulator
The DioField Chronicle
Dragons: Legends of the Nine Realms
Electrician Simulator
Gundam Evolution
Han’yo
Hardspace: Shipbreaker
Hunt: Showdown: The Penitent
I, AI
Jack Move
No Place for Bravery
OneShot
The Outbound Ghost
Piofiore: Episodio 1926
Potion Permit
Prison Tycoon: Under New Management
Prodeus
Return to Monkey Island
River City Girls Zero
Rogue: Genesia
Ruya
Salt 2: Shores of Gold
Serial Cleaners
Session: Skate Sim
Shovel Knight Dig
Slime Rancher 2
Songs from the Iron Sea
Soulstice
SpiderHeck
Stellaris: Toxoids Species Pack
Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythm Festival
There is No Light
Wylde Flowers

[argyle]

Games added: Nothing

Last week: Finished nothing, played way too much Dreamlight Valley.

This week: More DV, who knows what else.

So to continue a conversation from the other thread...

argyle and old man: they are re releasing Valkyrie Profile Lenneth digitally at the end of the month with Elysium. It can't be more than $15-20. Soooo...yeah.

Also school started again. Soooo...yeah to that too. I will check in when I can but the beginning of the year is always rough (in a good way, I like being busy). Hope all is well fam!

Also. ****. YES. I am looking forward to that Suikoden remaster...just hope Konami doesn't try to like...make new ones. I remember what they did my boy Sparkster in Rocket Knight. No...no no. No.

No.

That's great news about Lenneth, I'll have to check it out. Wish they'd port the second one too, I wouldn't mind playing it again.

As for Suikoden, you may already be aware of this (I'm pretty sure we've talked about it here) but the REAL new Suikoden that's being worked on is from the original devs:





That's the latest trailer from TGS - looks amazing. And J, I'd be shocked if you didn't love Suikoden. S2 is one of the all-time best JRPGs IMO - an amazing story with some fantastic turn-based combat and tons of interesting characters to recruit.

[canedaddy]

That's great news about Lenneth, I'll have to check it out. Wish they'd port the second one too, I wouldn't mind playing it again.

I chimed in on the other thread, but that is great news indeed. And yes, very excited for the REAL new Suikoden.



Played recently: Tails of Iron

Finished: Tails of Iron

Added to backlog: nothing

Current backlog: 25 (24 PS4, 1 Vita)


Tails of Iron was a blast. I platinum'd the main game and got two of the three DLC trophies (the last trophy requires a second playthrough, which I might do later).

Not sure what I'll play next. I started a couple of games but they didn't quite grab me at the moment.

[jfissel]

Finished: Nothing

Now Playing: Stray

Added to Backlog: Nothing

Current Backlog: 43 games

GTA 6 hack...yeah, that's unfortunate. It's been almost 10 years and the major players behind that series are gone from Rockstar - I'm still interested, but that length of time really didn't do it any favors.

[Phaseknox]

GTA 6 hack...yeah, that's unfortunate. It's been almost 10 years and the major players behind that series are gone from Rockstar - I'm still interested, but that length of time really didn't do it any favors.

The Grand Theft Auto VI hack was rather insignificant as it just showed a bunch of early in development test footage that didn’t reveal much about the game except that it’s going to have two playable characters (male and female), and take place in Vice City which we already knew.

People are speculating that it’s going to be cross-gen because it started development on PS4, but I would be surprised if it was considering that it’s still at least a couple of years away. I’m hoping that the leaks cause Rockstar to officially announce the game with a trailer soon, because it’s been nine years since Grand Theft Auto V came out so we’re due for something about Grand Theft Auto VI at this point.

Speaking of Grand Theft Auto V, I started playing it again on PS4 and it still holds up pretty well. It’s a good looking and playing game even to this day. However, even after nine years I’m still remembering a lot about it so I might not stick with it since it’s kind of feeling familiar. I have too many games that I haven’t played to be replaying ones that I already have.

[Phaseknox]

I played the demo for Star Ocean: The Divine Force, and it’s really good IMO. The story and characters are entertaining like an anime, and the voice acting is good. The gameplay is fast, smooth and responsive with good button mapping, and the combat is real-time hack ‘n slash action. It’s a bit button mash-y, but still fun. The environments are kind of linear, but also expansive allowing for some exploration. The music is good, too.

I can tell that this is going to be a big epic action RPG, and I would buy it on day one if I had a PS5. However, the PS4 version is somewhat blurry and washed out looking. You can choose between graphics and performance modes, but they’re basically blurry and blurrier. I chose graphics mode since I wanted the graphics to look as good as they could, but even in that mode they were somewhat low res and blurry.

I just want PS4 versions of cross-gen games to look like PS4 games, but the PS4 version of this game looks like a Switch game. And there’s really no excuse for that considering how good games like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Days Gone, Far Cry 6, Ghost of Tsushima, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn/Forbidden West, The Last of Us Part II, Uncharted 4, etc. all look. This game isn’t even really in the same ballpark as those when it comes to graphics, so it should have a clean, clear, high resolution image quality instead of looking like Vaseline is smeared on the screen.

I still might get it for PS4 when it’s cheaper since I really like it and would like to play it sooner rather than later, but I also know that it will look a lot better on PS5 so maybe I will just wait and get that version when I get a PS5. But regardless one thing is for certain, this is the best Star Ocean game since Till the End of Time.

[canedaddy]

I played and finished the Valkyrie Elysium demo, and I really liked it. Enough in fact to want the game on day one, but it’s worth $40 to me not $60. If they were selling it for $40 then I would buy it on day one, but it’s just not the quality of a $60 game IMO. I really like its dark fantasy game world, the Valkyrie character that you play as and especially the combat which is a ton of fun. However, based on the demo the game is pretty much a linear action hack ‘n slash game. It’s not an adventure game or RPG, it’s strictly making your way through linear levels fighting enemies and eventually reaching a boss. It’s a lot of fun to play because the combat is so good, but it lacks depth and variety.

I played the demo and thought it was awful. The combat is meh and everything else is worse. The main character looks and plays like a mannequin. The visuals are PS3 level at best. The story it throws out is like every game ever... Yggdrasil, Ragnorok, Fenrir, etc. (I realize the series is based on Norse mythology, but zzzzzzz.) This is one case where a demo took me from "very excited" to "not interested at all."

GTA 6 hack...yeah, that's unfortunate. It's been almost 10 years and the major players behind that series are gone from Rockstar - I'm still interested, but that length of time really didn't do it any favors.

Agreed. My level of hype for a new GTA game is pretty low given those departures and Rockstar's handling of the original trilogy, along with the milking of and focus on GTA Online. I suspect RDR2 is the last great Rockstar open-world game.


I've been trying a lot of different games but nothing is clicking right now. Going to try a few more tonight.

[argyle]

Speaking of trying games, I've dabbled with a few on Gamepass over the past week or so.

TMNT: Shredder's Revenge - I may be late to the party on this, but this is a fantastic beat-em-up. It seems like most devs who decide to make a modern beat-em-up stick TOO closely to the old games, which were designed to be quarter munchers and are therefore very cheap. This game isn't like that at all - everything feels very precise and fair. It looks fantastic and is just a blast to play. Highly recommended.

Metal: Hellsinger - If you like the modern Doom games and metal music, you can't go wrong with this game. You have to attack on the beat, and it's very addictive. When you get your combo meter maxed, the vocals kick in, and you just feel like an absolute bad-ass. I've only played through the tutorial & the first level so far, but I'm absolutely going to be playing more.

You Suck At Parking - This is an interesting one. It's an overhead racing puzzle game? You only have two buttons, the gas & the brake. There's no reverse, and once you come to a full stop that round is over. So your goal is to get to the parking spot as fast as possible & then stop in it. What I played I enjoyed well enough, but it seems like the difficulty ramps up to be pretty tough - possibly frustrating. I'll probably give this one a little more time, but don't know that I'll be sticking with it to the end.

Also, a Steam Deck update. The Gamepass cloud service works great on it, as long as you have a decent wifi connection. Unfortunately, mine at work is spotty. Not the end of the world, but a little disappointing. On the plus side, the thing is an emulation beast. More on this when I've gotten to put it through its paces some more, but so far I'm loving this aspect of it especially. Haven't played anything "native" on it yet, funny enough. Hades went on sale today for $15, so I may pick that back up for it - I'd have to start over, but that's not really much of a chore.

[canedaddy]

Also, a Steam Deck update. The Gamepass cloud service works great on it, as long as you have a decent wifi connection. Unfortunately, mine at work is spotty. Not the end of the world, but a little disappointing. On the plus side, the thing is an emulation beast. More on this when I've gotten to put it through its paces some more, but so far I'm loving this aspect of it especially. Haven't played anything "native" on it yet, funny enough. Hades went on sale today for $15, so I may pick that back up for it - I'd have to start over, but that's not really much of a chore.

How does it feel? Controls work well?


Also, question for the Yakuza people (crim and j)... How Long to Beat says Yakuza 6 is half as long as 5. Literally... 18.5 vs. 37. Is that right? If so, maybe I'll fire up that bad boy tonight.

[Phaseknox]

I played the demo and thought it was awful. The combat is meh and everything else is worse. The main character looks and plays like a mannequin. The visuals are PS3 level at best. The story it throws out is like every game ever... Yggdrasil, Ragnorok, Fenrir, etc. (I realize the series is based on Norse mythology, but zzzzzzz.) This is one case where a demo took me from "very excited" to "not interested at all."

I obviously liked it a lot more than you did, but I wasn’t expecting you to be so down on it since I thought that you liked older style Japanese third person action games which it basically is. I agree that the story and characters are kind of meh, but I do like the Valkyrie that you play as. The graphics are PS3/Xbox 360 quality like you said, and the art style is an odd mix of cel-shaded and realistic but I kind of like it. I think that the music is really good. The one thing that I can’t agree with you about is the combat, because I think that it’s great. It’s easily the best thing about the game IMO. I don’t know if you completed the demo, but before it’s over you can unlock some cool attack moves in the skill tree. I personally think that it’s a really fun third person action game, but I’m disappointed that it doesn’t really seem to incorporate any adventure or RPG elements which I was hoping for. It’s definitely not something that they should be charging $60 for, $40 would be a lot more reasonable IMO. I expect to be able to get it for that much, or less Black Friday. Star Ocean: The Divine Force is more of what I was expecting it to be like, I’m curious to hear what you think of it if you play the demo.

My level of hype for a new GTA game is pretty low given those departures and Rockstar's handling of the original trilogy, along with the milking of and focus on GTA Online. I suspect RDR2 is the last great Rockstar open-world game.

You’ve been a grumpy old man lately. I have no concerns with Grand Theft Auto VI, I really have no doubt that it’s going to be a great game. I even expect to like it more than GTAV because I expect to like the main characters and setting more. It’s my most anticipated game right now, and I hope that Rockstar releases an announcement trailer for it soon.

I've been trying a lot of different games but nothing is clicking right now. Going to try a few more tonight.

With 700+ PS4 games, I feel like I have Game Pass. I treat my collection how people treat Game Pass, I browse my games, check something out, say meh and move on. I admit that I’ve purchased more digital and indie games than I should have, because I don’t have any real desire to play a lot of them. I’m just not all that big into retro style games these days, yet that’s kind of what makes up the bulk of my collection. I have to be in a certain mood for retro style games especially pixel art ones, but I haven’t been lately. I don’t even know what I’m really in the mood for anymore, everything just seems kind of meh to me now. I’m going to keep checking out games that I think that I might be in the mood to play, and hope that something finally clicks with me.